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Chapter 15
The Colorful Leak of
Postmodernism in the Turkish
Cinema Onur Ünlü Narratives:
The Reflection of the Concept of
Postmodernism in Cinema

Berceste Gülçin Özdemir

İstanbul University, Turkey

ABSTRACT
Postmodernism is interpreted with an opposed thought about modernism which affects all of the art
fields. Cinema art is affected from the discourse created by postmodernism. As a result of the changes
of narrative strategies in film narratives by postmodernism, existing conventions in classical narration
cinema have been differentiated. In this chapter, Onur Ünlü’s, who has given artworks in New Era Turkish
Cinema, Güneşin Oğlu and Celal Tan ve Ailesinin Aşırı Acıklı Hikayesi films are analyzed according to
postmodern narrative strategies with postmodern genre film criticism. Arguments, which are used by Onur
Ünlü in the plot of his two films, are discussed together with narrative strategies. How the postmodern
narrative strategies such as intertextuality, collage, parody, pastiche, self-reflexivity are used in both
of the films are analyzed with plot, characters, time, and space. In collaboration with basic elements of
narrative, narrative strategy is mentioned with regard to New Era Turkish Cinema’s progressing.

INTRODUCTION

Postmodernism is interpreted with an opposed thought about modernism which affects all of the art
fields. Cinema art is affected from the discourse created by postmodernism. As a result of the changes
of narrative strategies in film narratives by post-modernism, existing conventions in classical narration
cinema have been differentiated. Remembering of watching film with an dramatic ways, narrative strat-
egies of plots to provide the spectator to think about them using out of camera angels in the classical
narrative cinema, representations of characters out of conventional stereotypes using of intertextuality

DOI: 10.4018/978-1-5225-8491-9.ch015

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The Colorful Leak of Postmodernism in the Turkish Cinema Onur Ünlü Narratives

remain at bay film and spectator and providing alternative watching experience in watching experience.
In this study, Onur Ünlü’s, who has given artworks in New Era Turkish Cinema, Güneşin Oğlu (2008)
and Celal Tan ve Ailesinin Aşırı Acıklı Hikayesi (2011) films are analyzed according to post-modern
narrative strategies with post-modern genre film criticism. Arguments, which are used by Onur Ünlü in
the plot of his two films are discussed together with narrative strategies. The contributions of narrative
strategies used in films to New Era Turkish Cinema and the experiences of spectators are discussed. How
the post-modern narrative strategies such as intertextuality, collage, parody, pastiche, self-reflexivity are
used in both of the films are analyzed with plot, characters, time and space. In collaboration with basic
elements of narrative and narrative strategy is mentioned with regard to New Era Turkish Cinema’s
progressing. The appearance of the experience of spectators’, giving the meaning of the interrogable
facts emergent from post-modern narrative strategies by the spectators’, and the contribution of post-
modern narratives to traditional cinema conventions were also presented in discussion and conclusion.

BACKGROUND

The narrative strategies of postmodern cinema produced in such a way as to create contrasts to modernist
films offer multiple perspectives to the spectator’s film-watching experiences. In the study, firstly, infor-
mation about the concept of postmodernism will be given. The semantic transformations that the concept
has undergone in the historical process are also ambiguous in terms of clearly defining the concept. In
this context, discussions will be made about the concepts that make sense of the postmodern cinema
in the relationship of postmodernism with cinema. The fact that spectators experience movie watching
that is different from the classical narrative cinema with the strategies used in the postmodern cinema
narratives produces questions also with regard to the relationship of postmodernist narrative strategies
with spectators. The study examined the movies Güneşin Oğlu (2008) and Celal Tan ve Ailesinin Aşırı
Acıklı Hikayesi (2011) of Onur Ünlü, who is one of the directors of the new Turkish Cinema, based on
the main elements of the narrative with the narrative strategies that have been used in the postmodern
cinema narratives, and also the characters, space, and the subjects regarding time and narrative. Within
this direction, the narrative strategies in the Turkish cinema after 1990 and the changes that these nar-
rative strategies create on the spectator’s experience will be discussed.

THE REFLECTION OF THE CONCEPT OF POSTMODERNISM IN CINEMA

The concept of postmodernism is cited by Gordon Marshall in the field of sociology by the description
of Zygmunt Bauman as follows: “Variety, contingency, and ambiguity are a continuous and irreducible
pluralism of cultures, communal traditions, ideologies ‘lifestyles’ or ‘language games’” (Marshall, 2005:
593). In his book The Condition of Postmodernity (1990), David Harvey asks questions with the concept
of postmodernism and provides that the reader internalizes the content:
Does postmodernism represent a radical break with modernism, or is it simply a revolt within
modernism against a certain form of high modernism? Is postmodernism a style or should we view it
strictly as a periodizing concept? Does it have a revolutionary potential by virtue of its opposition to all
forms of meta-narratives and its close attention to other worlds and other voices that have for too long

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been silenced? Or is it simply the commercialization and domestication of modernism and a reduction
of the latter’s already tarnished aspirations to a “laissez-faire” anything goes market eclective politics?
(Harvey, 2006: 57).
According to Mike Featherstone, there is ambiguity in the definition of postmodernism but it hosts
a structure that consists of “a conceptual confusion such as the loss of a sense of historical past, schiz-
oid culture, excremental culture, the replacement of reality by images and cognitive complexities like
unchained signifiers” (Featherstone, 2013: 36). The concept of postmodernism is also used as a current
of thought in the field of art, with interpretations that are used in a way that will contradict modernism.
Andreas Huyssen notes that postmodernism was first used in the literary field by the literary critics Leslie
Fiedler and Ihab Hassan in the 1960s and states that in the mid-1970s, the concept gained validity in
the fields of architecture, dance, theater, painting, film and music (Huyssen, 1984: 11). In its relation-
ship with cinema, the concept of postmodernism is a concept that plays a role in breaking the codes of
classical narrative cinema, allowing interdisciplinary reading. In his article The Culture of Modernism
(1985), Ihab Hassan presents the differences between modernism and postmodernism in a schema, show-
ing what concepts in classical narrative cinema can evolve into postmodern narratives. Contradictions
such as purpose-play, hierarchy-anarchy, distance-participation, centering-dispersal, genre/boundary-
text/intertext, interpretation/reading-against interpretation/misreading, narrative-anti-narrative, master
code-idiolect, type-mutant, paranoia-schizophrenia, God the Father-The Holy Ghost, metaphysics-irony
and determinacy-indeterminacy are schematically illustrated by Hassab in the antagonism of modernism-
postmodernism (Hassab, 1985: 123-124). In his work Palimpsests (1982), Gerard Genette tries to show
the connection of parody with genres like transvestites, pastiche, transpositions, and so on. In this genre
that consists of texttop and lower text, the lower text refers to the original text in which the parody is
the subject, and the texttop refers to the changes to which the lower text is exposed. The existence of
the texttop is stated to be possible when the reader comprehends that he/she reads a parody and agrees
with this genre (Cebeci, 2016: 78). According to Linda Hutcheon, while the parody emphasizes the dif-
ference from the basic text, the pastiche has been the one that stems from similarity. She also states that
pastiche should be thought of as a style imitation rather than an imitation of a particular text (Cebeci,
2016: 79). Hutcheon said “parody is not limited to the style of the relationship between the two texts
referred to in the parody. From the point of view of the reader, the parody necessitates to find out another
text that is linked to the parody, the intent of the author and the effect he/she is aiming to awaken on
the reader. At the same time, parody necessitates the ability to interpret the text to which the parody is
linked” (Cebeci, 2016: 80). Norman Denzin states that Carl Reiner’s film Dead Men Do not Wear Plaid
(1982) is a parody and he notes that the film is making fun of film noir by stealing from its traditions
while respecting and sympathizing it. The film Dead Men Do not Wear Plaid is presented as a comedy
film by repeating the images belonging to the noir movie and the narrative codes (Denzin, 1995: 82). In
this context, there is no new production in parody and pastiche, but there is the imitation of the old one;
while the parody prompts the reader to think more, pastiche is based on imitation and meets the reader
or the audience. Pauline Marie Rosenau, on the other hand, notes that pastiche is the composition that is
created by putting ideas or views together ideas in a disorganized, random way and by merging the old
and new like patchwork (Rosenau, 1998: 16). In this regard, it is thought that the compositions that are
created by merging the old and new can reveal debates in cinema. Citing from John Orr, Hayward notes
that pastiche cinema is open to readings that contradict and may be potentially dangerous and may have a
schizoid aspect (Hayward, 2012: 366). Regarding making such an inference grounding on schizophrenia,
it becomes important to read the feeling that pastiche arouses in spectators or the feeling that it creates

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in the perception of the spectators. According to Lacan, schizophrenia is defined as “break of the chain
of markers, that is to say, a break in the interconnected syntagmatic chain of markers that constitute
an expression or meaning. When the relationship between the markers is ended and when the rings of
the marker chain is broken, we are confronted with schizophrenia as a bundle of discrete and unrelated
markers”. It is the expression that Jameson describes as the marker here, and Jameson indicates that the
meaning or content of expression will grow out of the relationships between expressions. Relating the
schizophrenic soul to the linguistic disorder, Jameson associates the unbundling of the past, present,
and future tenses in the sentence to the unbundling of the past, present, and future tenses in our own
biographical and spiritual experience (Jameson, 1994: 86). Steve Best and Douglas Kellner, on the other
hand, defined schizophrenia as:

From the point of view of schizophrenia patients, words come into the body as the live, corporal fragments
of nonsense and leave the body as sound waves without articulation. In a parallel style, schizophrenia
patients experience the body as a coincidental confusion of fragmentary parts, as well as a solidified,
indivisible volume that Deleuz borrowed from Antonin Artaud and called body without organs (Best &
Kellner, 2016: 127).

With the use of pastiche in cinema as well as the company of other narration techniques to film
narrative and parallel to the interpretations of theorists about the schizophrenic soul, the possibility of
multiple readings that the narratives created in the perception of the spectators will increase. Prefabrica-
tion, intertextuality, bricolage, and self-reflexivity are among the narrative strategies that confront the
spectators in postmodern film narratives. The concepts of prefabrication, intertextuality, and bricolage are
concepts that move and overlap between the concepts of pastiche and parody. Prefabrication consists of
fully pre-produced images for a film (Hayward, 2012: 363). As a concept coinciding with prefabrication,
intertextuality refers to the relationship between two or more texts. Bricolage, which is called creation
from existing material, is described as bringing different styles, texts and genres together (Hayward,
2012: 364-365). While reflexivity is defined as a person’s ability to self-attribute, the concept of self-
reflexivity is also based on the concept of reflexivity (Edgar & Sedgwick, 2007: 311). Self-reflexivity
points to self-attribution in cinema. According to Gilles Deleuze, the concept of self-reflexivity is also
used as the concept of metacinema; Deleuze describes metacinema as cinema about the cinema itself
(Deleuze, 2014: 86). Harvey sees the postmodern style as a text that can be compared to another text
that has its own idiolect and rhetoric (Harvey, 2006: 57). Harvey indicates that the authors who are
creative in writing texts create by looking at the texts they have encountered before and intertextuality
has its own life. Harvey states that it is difficult to dominate a text and argues that “the uncontrolled
joint touching of meanings are beyond our control”. Harvey also claims that the incentive of disruptive-
ness contains the acknowledgment of this state and also contains looking for someone else in a text or
creating a text in someone else. Harvey predicates the reason of Derrida seeing collage-assembly as
the primary form of postmodern discourse on these foundations. The producer of culture has created
the raw materials (pieces) and by doing so, has enabled the consumers to combine these pieces as they
wish (Harvey, 2006: 67). Having described the collage-assembly technique as a simultaneous effect by
superimposing the effects from different times and places, Harvey criticized the modernists who have
used this technique by saying that they also approve the conditions to which they react (Harvey, 2006:
35). Contrary to Hayward, Harvey mentions that while postmodernism is often against mysterious art
and avant-garde, it takes its chance on the media and in open areas (Harvey, 2006: 77). While listing

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the features of postmodernism in the context of arts in Consumer Culture and Postmodernism (1991),
Mike Featherstone specified the collapse of the border between art and daily life, the collapse of the
hierarchical differentiation between high culture and mass culture, the stylistic hybrid that supports the
blending of eclecticism and codes, the greetings of superficial lack of depth of the parody, pastiche,
irony, acting and culture, the losing favor of the originality of art producer and the assumption that art
can only consist of iteration (Featherstone, 2013: 30). The features of the postmodern cinema allow
multiple readings and recommend that the spectator performs a complicated watching experience within
this patchwork mechanism. However, the mood experienced in this confusion can bring along a set of
schizoid illusions. As Steve O’Connor said, the postmodern cinema found its expression after many
writers extended and approved Jameson’s analysis as characterizing pastiche or multiple styles in vari-
ous forms (Connor, 1997: 199). In the films of Ünlü examined in the article, narration techniques such
as pastiche, parody, self-reflexivity, and intertextuality regarding the postmodern cinema’s narrative
strategies were presented to the reading of the spectator. However, in addition to the multiple readings
provided by postmodernism, the narrative techniques used by the postmodern cinema and its eclectic
point of view that it creates in the film-watching experience of the spectator also allowed the discussion
of high culture and popular culture concepts. While the concepts of high culture and popular culture and
the form of the relationship between these concepts were discussed in the 20th century, interpreters of
this age described 20th century as non-stylistic according to Featherstone. While Simmel used the term
non-stylistic, Malraux described this culture as a museum without walls, and it was indicated that the
collapse of the pastiche, the retro and symbolic hierarchies and the recording and iteration of cultures
were actualized by postmodernism (Featherstone, 2013: 60).
The new period of the Turkish cinema has been a concept that began to be discussed in the mid-
1990s. This period, which started with the film Tabutta Rövaşata (Derviş Zaim, 1996), characterizes
a period that is still debated today. As the new period of the Turkish cinema, which gained momentum
in the mid-1990s, was influenced by the political life of the period, the topics of the stories became
more politicized than in the past years and opened the way to more questioning stories. Directors such
as Zeki Demirkubuz, Yeşim Ustaoğlu, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Yavuz Turgul, Reha Erdem, and Serdar Akar
are mentioned as the directors of this era who released important films. In the new era of the Turkish
cinema, a different narrative language began to be used and it is known as a period in which educated
directors also emerged. The directors who released films in this period began to use different narrative
strategies from the mainstream narrative structure in terms of cinematography. The films in which the
modern narrative structure was presented were appreciated with awards in national and international film
festivals. The focus of the stories became more individualized, the characters became more diversified,
the straight line of the plot became inclined, camera angles were presented as angles used by contem-
porary narrative conventions, bypasses were used in mounting, non-diegetic sounds were utilized in
sound design, and uncertainties at the beginning of films were represented by different strategies at the
end of films. Developments in all these narrative strategies overlap with the narrative strategies used in
postmodern cinema from time to time. Also in postmodern cinema, the directors deconstruct the conven-
tions of the mainstream cinema. The film narrative turns into a narrative that has to be questioned for
the spectator. The making sense of the indicators presented by the director becomes important as well.
Postmodern cinema includes both high cultural elements and benefits from popular cultural elements.
For this reason, postmodern cinema allows multiple film-reading analyses. This is sometimes criticized
by film theorists. Postmodern cinema, which can melt popular culture and high culture elements in the
same film narrative, increases the curiosity of the spectator and at the same time exposes the spectator

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to the questioning narrative language of the contemporary narrative structure. The narrative language
of postmodern cinema sways between mainstream cinema and contemporary cinema and has a positive
effect on the narrative strategies of Turkish cinema. Many narrative strategies that are used in film narra-
tives such as prefabrication, intertextuality, bricolage pastiche, parody, intertextuality, and self-reflexivity
make it possible for the spectator to make sense of the story from a different perspective. These narra-
tive strategies related to postmodern cinema are strategies that reveal how Turkish cinema will be fed
from different cultural elements. In this context, Turkish Cinema takes its place as a cinema which is
discussed and spoken in international world cinema platforms. Both films of Ünlü which are examined
in the study provide concrete examples of how postmodern cinema will be represented. For this reason,
the postmodern narrative strategies in the films have been told and explained together with the events.

The Examination of Onur Ünlü Films by Postmodern Type Film Criticism

Within the Frame of Postmodern Cinema Narrative Strategies

The plotlines of the two films are explained together and therefore how the postmodern narrative strate-
gies are presented is tried to be explained in a concrete way.

THE MOVIE “SON OF THE SUN”

The film tells the lucky character retired teacher Mr. Fikri, who was one of the 17 people born during
the solar eclipse in the 1950s and who was considered the son of the sun, and his questioning of the
concepts of miracle and reality.

The Examination of Film by Postmodern Type Film Criticism

Within the Frame of Postmodern Cinema Narrative Strategies

As an irony with the bourgeois appearance of the character Alper and his artistic style, his phone rings
with the Turkish 10th Year Anthem melody, he learns that he will be taken to a construction and goes
to the place with a taxi that he does not know where it comes from. Şule is waiting for Alper in the red
dress like the femme-fatale female characters in the film noir movies. The site of construction is not
finished yet and it is a big, gloomy and dark structure. The blind in one eye character Kurban Murat
is in a suit, he is a hired killer who kills people for money, he has suddenly beamed to Şule and Alper
and starts talking to Şule about how the murder should be, but Alper listens in surprise because he is
not informed about the subject. While the appearance of Kurban Murat, Alper’s bourgeois suit, beard,
the dollars he sometimes takes out of his pocket, the femme-fatale dress and manners of Şule, and the
gloomy and dark place where they meet reminds us of the places and characters in detective movies and
film noir movies, the film refers to these genres with the murkiness and the abandoned state of the place
that is given by high-angle shot and the idea of how the murder spoken will be handled. When Alper
goes up on the construction terrace to rebel against what is happening, he shouts with an absurd poem
and the camera displays Alper with a subjective camera movement. While the music used and the lyrics
of the poem provides the audience with the use of absurdity in the film narrative, with the effect of the
plotline that increases causal motivation, the film narrative succeeds in keeping the sense of wonder

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of the spectators. After this sequence, a fast pass takes the spectators to the scene in which the waiter
Burak, who lives in the same neighborhood as Fikri, is unconscious under a car.
While all these events take place, Burak rushes to his house and wants to talk to his roommate Ser-
kan about the anomaly of events. The Torso (1973), Marilyn Monroe, and the Godfather (1972) posters
are seen on the wall of Burak’s house. The Torso is an Italian film and is about sex murders. Marilyn
Monroe is a femme-fatale woman of her time whom men regard as the object of desire as a sexy star.
The film the Godfather is a cult film that is shown among the best films of the century telling the story
of an Italian mafia family. With the posters on the wall, the director refers to the murder-related films,
mafia films and femme-fatale women who are objects of desire by using intertextuality. The owner of
the café threatens Burak with a gun as Burak comes from his home with a gun and does not act like a
waiter. In the film, many characters have weapons in hand, and the use of the weapon is used in the film
in an exaggerative way. The use of the weapon in an exaggerated way and the fact that everybody can
kill whomever they want instantly can also be described as a pastiche made for these genres, together
with the reference made to the detective and film noir genres.
In the film narration, it is not possible for the spectator to easily reach catharsis because the complicated
chain of events continues. The professor says that the 17 souls who were born on the day of the solar
eclipse are free and have left their bodies, stating that the two persons who are immortal are the character
Fikri and the professor himself. He also indicates that they are immortal like Turkey’s “Sun of Art Zeki
Müren” and Zeki Müren’s image is shown among the sequences using the collage-assembly technique.
Fikri draws the attention to the excessiveness of the concepts used in the film narrative by saying “I
was saying to myself ‘what is missing in this story? It is the f…ing ancient Egyptians”, and with this
strategy, the director makes fun of his own film through the characters. Thus the spectator does not forget
that he watches a film and sees the self-reflective narrative strategy in the film narrative. The dialogues
also encourage the spectator to think by using concepts like arrogance, separation of the soul from the
body, lie, self, etc. While Fikri is beamed to learn about events, he talks about the value of the truth
and also about miracle from the taxi addressing the spectator, and by using the effect of alienation, the
character is provided to establish a dialogue with the spectator, thus praising the truth while making the
spectator think about how the end of the film will be.
Kurban Murat, who left the process of killing Cahide half finished, is called to the place where he
will commit the murder and after Şule and Alper leaves the place, he says “take a plane trip to Southern
Turkey” with the money he takes out of his pocket. The idea and expression of going to the South are
also a cue that is heard in Hollywood narratives. In some of the dialogues that the director uses, he dis-
cursively permits intertextuality. After this scene, Kurban Murat turns to the spectators again and uses
some expressions that aim the spectators to question the truth. He also asks questions and says “but the
important thing is not how we perceive but what we perceive”. In a sense, this sentence refers to what
the spectator perceives and how he/she perceives it in his/her watching process. While Kurban Murat
speaks, he starts to walk towards his house and he soliloquizes regarding death, murder, the murdered,
fear of death and self. The spectator begins to understand who the character Hamiyet is towards the end
of the film and reaches catharsis. Fikri, who is in the body of Kurban Murat, disguises himself as Hamiyet
and tells the spectators “so there was nobody named Hamiyet; Hamiyet was the armor of the hired killer
Kurban Murat who went mad due to the fear of being killed. Here is the secret of the paradox of Hamiyet
that has ruined my life” and finishes his sentence by looking at the mirror. The character looking in
the mirror reminds once more that the spectator is watching a movie. Fikri, who disguised himself as
Hamiyet, sees Alper and Şule coming by taxi, kills Alper and himself, so Fikri becomes the remaining

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The Colorful Leak of Postmodernism in the Turkish Cinema Onur Ünlü Narratives

character. They sit on a bench by the sea and the film ends with their dialogue. In their dialogue, Şule tells
Alper “you are being silly!” and Alper says, “but the silliness of the work done is directly proportional
to the number of spectators”. By saying this, he expresses an implication that the content of the movies
with highest-grossing is ridiculous. Thus, using the self-reflective narrative strategy, the director has
conveyed again the critical interpretation of the relationship between the number of spectators and the
nonsense of the content of the films to the spectators via the character. The camera that shoots the two
characters from different angles is a moving camera, and in the spectator’s gaze of the characters, the
movement of the camera reminds the spectator that he/she is watching a movie. Fikri, who learns that
Şule is pregnant, decides to kill himself because he does not want to be a mother and makes a statement
on the astonishment of Şule: “The thing is, I came to the end of the road, I am going; since I cannot be
the old me again, at least I want to be the one that I want and that is you” he says and shoots himself.
After the shooting scene while the song Kara Sevda is playing, Şule goes away, and this scene, similar
to the end of old Turkish Yeşilçam films, presents an example of intertextuality by referring to Yeşilçam
films. While in detective movies, ill-hearted, sexy, femme-fatale characters are being punished, Şule is
the survivor and not a person who is killed. In this context, this also shows that the film has broken the
codes of the discourses of the classical narrative structure. Fikri and the professor are the ones who did
not die as the immortal “Sons of the Sun”, and while the dialogues are given at the end of the film, both
characters accepted to experience each other’s lives. When the professor watches a place with mummies
with a hand camera at hand, the camera focuses on the hand camera and the spectator remembers that
he/she is watching a movie by seeing a camera inside the camera. The images are said by the professor
to belong to the souls entered into the mummies and he also says that he is not sure whether he should
share it with the public or not.
While the film allows spectators to think about concepts such as oscillation, death, fear of death,
reality, and simulacra, the dialogues increase the concentration of questioning until the film ends. The
definition of oscillation in Turkish in the field of physics is made by the Turkish Language Association
(TDK) as the “the regular movement of an object at a steady speed with certain positions” (http://www.
tdk.gov.tr/index.php?option=com_bts&view=bts&kategori1=veritbn&kelimesec=271901). While the
inclined progression of the characters that oscillate in time and the plotline, and the film narrative with a
structure that makes the spectators question to support the causal motivation of the spectator constantly
and also make the spectator think about the reality of the concepts in the narrative. Jean Baudrillard sees
the death of the individual in the removal of the distinction between reality and representation (Hayward,
2012: 367). The presentation of Hamiyet as actually Kurban Murat to the spectator and Kurban Murat’s
words about death, reality, fear, and self at the end of the film create questioning about the disappearance
of reality and representation. The alienation effect that the director often uses in the film and Kurban
Murat providing questioning for the spectators by asking philosophical questions to them enable different
readings about the reality and the simulacra order in which the character is experienced. The fact that
Hamiyet, a character that is in the focal point of the plotline, emerges as Kurban Murat at the end of the
film and the presentation of Kurban Murat as the immortal character create irony with the name of the
character and it makes the spectators think why the person who died in this simulacra is chosen to be
mortal. In this context, a character substituting another character, which is read as simulacra, but the fact
that the character has communed in a single person and the notion of “the appearance that is desired to
be seen as a reality”, as Baudrillard says, show parallelism with the montage of presentation of a single
character until the end of the movie as if there are two different characters (Baudrillard, 2011: 6). While
Norman Denzin describes the emergence of the postmodern simulacra, he says that it happens when the

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 The Colorful Leak of Postmodernism in the Turkish Cinema Onur Ünlü Narratives

reality is produced with copies, representations and media-based devices, and he calls it the simulation.
According to Denzin, simulation is not something that uncovers the truth because he states that simula-
tion is something that shows that there is no such thing as reality (Denzin, 1995: 198). In this regard,
Ünlü questioned real and reality regarding the existence of characters and life, and they weighed on the
spectators’ minds and made them ask questions. These all have made the spectators rethink Baudrillard’s
simulation theory that he theorized.
In the interviews that the director of the film gave about the film, he mentioned the genre of the film
as a fantastic fun and games; the film is observed to refer also to detective films, film noir films, and
fantastic films. While the film’s name refers to the LP album of Zeki Müren that was released in the
1970s, the storyline enables an interpretation with regard to the name of the film as a name given to the
king in ancient civilizations because the two characters that are immortal in the film are called sons of
the sun and this reveals the fact that they have a special feature. The director has used the pastiche with
the plotline similar to the one that can be seen in the detective and film noir genres, with the character
stereotypes that can be found in these genres and with the references made with the objects such as
weapons commonly used in these genres. The director also used pastiche with the gloomy places that
can be seen in film noir movies, the stereotype of the hired killer, the stereotype of the femme-fatale
character and with cues that can be seen in Turkish Yeşilçam or Hollywood films. The music genres used
in the film are completely different from each other, and the usage of music is different from the classi-
cal narrative structure so the spectator sees the example of pastiche in the use of music in the narrative.

THE MOVIE “THE EXTREMELY TRAGIC STORY

OF CELAL TAN AND HIS FAMILY”

The film focuses on the plotline in which the professor of constitutional law Celal Tan kills his young
wife as a result of jealousy, Celal Tan’s family witnesses the murder and some other incidents take place.
Events that develop after the murder enable the spectator to question concepts such as rights, justice,
law, etc.

The Examination of Film by Postmodern Type Film Criticism

Within the Frame of Postmodern Cinema Narrative Strategies

When Celal Tan comes home, his young wife, Özge, welcomes him. However, Celal Tan, without allow-
ing Özge to speak, commits violence to her and kills her, while the family witnesses the situation behind
the frosted glass in the living room. In order to hide the incident, Celal Tan goes out quickly and goes
to the Constitutional Lawyers Association Club to find his friend Turan who is waiting for death. He
confesses the murder and asks Turan to take the blame for the murder. In the meantime, the rector comes
to the club and sees two friends talking. A dialogue takes place between Celal Tan and the rector; Celal
Tan’s son aims to sell a massage chair to the school and the rector confirms that this will happen. The
questions asked about what the seats are and the answers given are a criticism of the power mechanism.
Turan agrees that he will take the blame for the murder but he has a condition, he wants Celal Tan to
help him with the after-life questions that will be asked of him in the other world. The family, displayed
with a 180-degree reversed image, waits in fear in a car, not knowing what to do. This scene contains a
transition with a reverse angle and the screen slowly becomes straight. The 180-degree reverse display

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of the screen reveals the concrete presentation of a disrupted family. When Celal Tan returns home, he
shouts “Özge, Özge!” he feels sorry as if nothing happened and complains. Then Celal Tan looks at
himself in the mirror, faces himself then the family comes home at that moment and reacts as if they
are seeing the event for the first time. Özge’s brother blind Ergün and the doorman learn the event that
night. The arrival of the ambulance and the police in the building is presented to the spectators from a
high angle as if they are watching the incident from another building, so the spectator becomes the third
eye looking at the narrative from outside. The camera movements and angles used at the beginning of
film signal that the spectators will watch the film with different cinematographic techniques that are
different from the classical narrative structure. The daughter of the family Jülide is shown crying on the
television screen and the camera moves backward to show the studio environment, the camera and the
cameraman on the television channel. While the spectator is aware of the fact that the film character is
in front of the cameras, he/she is also informed about the presence of another camera that shoots the
camera that he/she sees on the movie screen; in this regard the spectator does not forget that he/she is
watching a movie.
The policeman who comes to take the family’s testimony also makes philosophical speeches about
death and the pastiche of policemen characters that are observed in detective movies is presented. An-
other policeman who stands quietly beside the other policeman and whom we cannot hear until the end
of the film follows only the dialogues on the radio in his hand. After the police are gone, Özge’s elder
brother Ergün asks the youngest person in the house Ege what color the policemen were wearing and
accordingly comments on how the case will proceed. Kamuran, the son of Celal Tan, enters Özge’s room
one night and tries to find a clue as to whether Özge has cheated on his father, but he comes across a
document from a person named Okan, but he encounters Özge’s ghost. With surprise, he says “What are
you?” and Özge says, “What do you think I am?” While the spectator is prompted to question about the
existence of ghosts, the questions of the blind character Ergün make the spectators think about concepts
such as the reality and the truth.
Okan is the name of the soprano lover of Jülide who studies in the conservatory. The character Okan
sings Italian arias by shouting and his talking style emulates the artist characters in Italian films. With
the character Okan, Ünlü makes a pastiche of the soprano and artist characters. Jülide says that she is
pregnant and the father of the baby is Okan. Okan tells Jülide “I’m saying go! Get out of my house!”
Okan’s cues are also referring to the charismatic and handsome actors of old Turkish Yeşilçam films,
therefore the film makes a pastiche of the characters of Yeşilçam as well.
As the family begins to question everything after this murder, Celal Tan gets worried and nervous.
At a moment when Celal Tan is about to cross the street, the traffic light begins to talk to him gives
him advice. The traffic light tells him that he should not trust Turan and Turan can use his doorman
as a false witness, and Celal Tan answers the traffic light and thinks about what it says. This dialog,
which can be seen in fantastic films, is not a strategy that directors use too much in Turkish cinema.
Does Celal Tan speak at that point with his own inner voice, or did voice from the invisible world come
into existence in the traffic light? The spectators are made to encounter with metaphysical issues. In
addition, a non-diegetic sound is given to the traffic light and thus the film plays with the conventions
of classical narrative cinema in terms of cinematography. Kamuran also believes in the reality of the
ghost he sees, shares this situation with Jülide, and says that Okan cheats on him with Özge. Jülide,
surprised, is thrilled to get the revenge on Okan. However, Kamuran, again confronted with the ghost
of Özge, learns that Okan is another Okan; he learns this from Özge but asks her to learn which Okan
he is. Celal Tan, on the other hand, goes to the police and testifies in accordance with the traffic lights.

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As opposed to the denouncement of Celal Tan who told the police that Turan is a murderer, the police
says that Turan denounced Celal Tan as the killer. Jülide goes to the school to get revenge and stabs
Okan. During the transition to the next scene, the “DIY – Do it Yourself Sculpture Exhibition” poster
hanging on the schoolyard is shown to the spectator. The director presents the criticism of a world,
where everyone can easily kill each other, via discourse. Jülide visits the policeman Hakkı at night not
to be punished, seduces him and starts to make love with him. The policeman stereotype who watches
everything silently listens to what happens from the outside. When the police go to the house of the Tan
family for another statement, Ergün, as a character who internalizes life more than the other characters
who can see, yells at Celal as “you filthy killer!” and says that he is the killer. He says “but everybody
here saw the murder. They saw it.” And this reminds the cult movie of Antonioni Blow Up (1971). This
reference to a different film, which is made by the discourses in the film, presents an example of inter-
textuality. The television is on at every moment when everyone is together, and when the police arrive,
the news of the death on the television is heard. The death news of the man whom Kamuran’s paternal
grandmother loves is heard by everyone in the living room, and everyone turns to the television screen
with a surprise. The presentation on television has critically handled the presentation of the newscasts,
and by doing so, the director uses the pastiche in this scene in the film about the presentation of televi-
sion news. The grandmother attempts to commit suicide after she hears the news but does not die; she is
hospitalized and the family members who are with her are confronted with the autopsied body of Özge,
who is then being released from the morgue. Celal Tan views religion critically and goes to a mosque
at night after seeing Özge. Just like the spotlight in the theater stage illuminates the character, Celal Tan
looks at the mosque under the spotlight. Celal Tan tells Özge, who came to him with her autopsied body,
“didn’t you die?” Özge replies “you don’t know what death is.” This dialogue about death presents an
example of intertextuality as a stereotypical dialogue that spectators can see in horror movies. Celal Tan
strangles Özge again under the spotlight. The identity of a character is hidden in the film narrative and
that creates the question of “who is that character?” This is one of the elements that provide the causal
motivation of the spectator in the classical narrative cinema and it also provides that the identity of the
character Okan becomes evident in the film. When the film approaches the end, Kamuran gives the
spectator the sign that the narrative of the film has begun to dissolve. The musician, who occasionally
gets on stage at the Constitutional Lawyers Association Club, finds Okan and tries to find out who is the
other side of the forbidden love by asking him if he has an affair with Özge. Okan accepts this love, the
rector comes in at that moment and states that Kamuran’s seat business has been concluded; 400 seats
have been sold to the school. The reference to the concept of the seat and the number of seats have been
repeated at the end of the film as well.
While the film is about to end, the news about the murder is heard from the television in the living
room and the news announces that the murder suspect doorman Ibrahim is caught and the killer of Okan
is the character blind Ergün. In the meantime, Celal Tan sits on the massage chair and smiles at the
camera that shoots him at a high angle; he sits comfortably and makes a meaningful smile. The fact that
a law professor is a murderer and that he is also awarded by the Constitutional Lawyers Association Club
exemplifies the parody the director made through the character. The facts that a person who gives lectures
about justice and rights does not accept the crime by performing one of the most serious unlawful acts,
denies his crime and covers the event present a serious irony to the spectators. Criticism of an order, in
which innocent people are sent to jail and the real killers live freely, is thus presented to the audience.
The director not only presented the example of a different narrative structure with the story of the
film and dramatic structure but also showed alternative narrative strategies in the cinematic language

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with shooting angles and camera movements. While characters are shown in a close shot in many scenes
from the beginning until the end of the film, black boxes and blurs are used on the right and left sides
of the screen frame. The fact that the camera is shows the characters and shoots from different angles
allows the spectator to look at the same scene from many angles. The use of the mirror item made it
possible for the characters to look at themselves, while reminding the spectators that they were watching
a movie, allowing them to keep their distance from the film.

FUTURE RESEARH DIRECTIONS

Both films of Onur Ünlü examined in this study present the spectators the differences between high
culture and popular culture while bringing some criticism to the popular cultural indicators. Changes,
transformations, and developments in popular culture also play important roles in determining both the
content and the forms of film moments. In postmodern culture, individuals who have been exposed to the
batch of codes of popular culture are beginning to lose the essence and meaning of their daily lives, which
creates gaps in their interpretation of life. The links between the postmodern film narratives, the popular
culture, and high culture must be re-examined and these contexts should be opened up to a discussion.
Simon Frith says that the concept of popular culture has begun to be debated with academic ap-
proaches in the 1930s and 1940s with the critique of mass culture. Firth also expresses that Marxist
critiques of the production of the contemporary popular culture and of the cycle of the commodity were
written (Firth, 1991: 103). According to John Storey, thoughts about popular culture are shaped by post-
modernism debates. Postmodern culture, on the other hand, has become a concept that began to decline
from the 1960s between high culture and popular culture. According to Storey, the popular culture taken
more seriously and its seriousness within itself are among the reasons for this decline (Storey, 2014:
10-11). Storey refers to Michel de Certeau and states that the definition of the popular culture is “the
art of using”. According to Storey, this description explains that popular culture products are used by
consumers, they are utilized and offer products that can become a habit in terms of consumers’ wishes.
Popular culture is expressed as non-culturally productive, un-signed, unread and un-symbolized. Storey
explains that popular culture, mass culture, and the mass consumption produced for mass culture have
a concept and this culture, in a sense, causes brain numbness and passivity (Storey, 2014: 4). Popular
culture, according to Storey, is a culture open to ideological manipulation, influenced by the culture
industry (Storey, 2014: 12). According to Chandra Mukerji and Michael Schudson, popular culture in-
cludes people’s beliefs, practices, and objects of which the roots are found in local traditions, the mass
beliefs, practices, and objects that are produced in political and commercial centers. In addition to the
elite cultural forms popularized in the popular culture, there are also popular forms that have risen to the
level of museum tradition (Mukerji & Schudson, 1986: 48). According to John Fiske, too, the popular
culture is a culture that is prone to be extreme and of which the brushstrokes are thick. According to
Fiske, the extreme paves the way for accusing in “fair, melodramatic, obvious, superficial, sensational
and similar” ways. Likewise, it also causes overflow in the act of making sense (Fiske, 2012: 142).
Also, while narrative strategies used by Ünlü in his films remind the spectators of the extremism of the
popular culture, they also bring about overflows in the act of making sense. On the other hand, with the
discourses he includes in the dialogues, Ünlü shows that this culture is criticized. The character, who
says that the absurdity of the work is directly proportional to the number of spectators, discourses about
the popular culture products. Fiske emphasizes that popular texts are overly trivialized and boring and

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they point out an immature admiration (Fiske, 2012: 142). Likewise, the sentence of the character in
the narrative reminds Fiske’s thoughts again. The fact that popular texts are obliged to present certain
meanings and certain delights can also lead to the obligation to include aggressive, vulgar and resistance
items (Fiske, 2012: 156-157). Ünlü’s films also satirize these obligations that popular texts contain and
allow the spectators to pay attention to the line between popular culture and high culture. According to
William Warner, intellectuals do not respect the popular culture, but on the other hand, they are open to
experiences to confuse them about art. This resistance of them to the popular culture also stems from
the difficulty of managing the popular (Warner, 1990: 732). The extremism of the indicators regarding
the popular culture that Ünlü also presents in his films is, in fact, a criticism of the popular culture and it
makes the spectators rethink the discourses of this culture. Having presented the popular cultural indica-
tors in two films in an exaggerated way, Ünlü also shows how these cultural products are standardized
and repeated continuously. James B. Gilbert states that the characters presented in the comedies, dramas,
series, and detective dramas are stereotyped and that this has become a necessity. Gilbert, however, adds
that film genres that contain popular culture narratives have been trying to make some changes in their
sense-making over the last thirty years (Gilbert, 1983: 141). If multiple readings can be developed in the
studies containing subjects like postmodernism, popular culture, high culture, and the determination of
the narrative strategy in films then more sense-making regarding the position of culture in community
life and artistic life can be possible.

CONCLUSION

The two films of Onur Ünlü which were analyzed reveal that the narrative strategies of postmodern cinema
have been applied to films. While narrative strategies such as prefabrication, intertextuality, bricolage,
pastiche and parody, intertextuality, and self-reflexivity are narrative strategies to which Turkish film
spectators are unaccustomed, Ünlü makes the spectators internalize this narrative language by iterating
these strategies in the two films. While postmodern cinema makes Turkish cinema successful in the
international context, it is effective in the new era Turkish cinema gaining different narrative languages.
Postmodern cinema, which makes people think with its high cultural elements, makes people question
today’s postmodern society and popular culture with its popular cultural products, also indicates that
the new era Turkish Cinema can offer multiple film readings. In this context, Ünlü is a director who
contributes to the development of postmodern cinema in the Turkish Cinema and enriches his narrative
language in every film he releases.
The interpretation of the two films of Onur Ünlü in terms of the viewpoint of the spectators brings
the avant-garde spectator formulation to mind that Laura Mulvey mentions. In her avant-garde specta-
tor formulation, Mulvey mentions that pleasure-oriented peeper spectators watch female characters in
a voyeuristic manner on the movie screen and argues that avant-garde spectatorship is different from
this spectatorship. The difference of the avant-garde spectator is that he/she watches the film in a differ-
ent way and emerges as a questioning spectator. Mulvey mentions that the theme of the narrative film
reveals new types of spectatorship in the stopping or delaying of normal cinematic time, and this type
of spectatorship finds its level with the features of Ünlü films, which uncover the type of spectators
that Mulvey mentions (Mulvey, 2012: 224). In addition to stopping the cinematic time, the director also
made the narrative line of the film Son of the Sun inclined in terms of the story by proceeding with the
oscillation issue in the film and provided that the spectator is able to see an example of the new type of

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spectators in Turkish cinema in their experience, as Mulvey mentioned. While Norman Denzin men-
tions the film Blue Velvet (1986) with postmodern features, he indicates that the film is multi-layered
and the spectator experiences contradictions in his/her relationships about what he/she sees. In parallel
with the ideas of Denzin, who expresses that the concepts of the traditional spectating is made difficult
for both male and female spectators and that the spectator feels a contradictory spectating experience
with the repetition of these concepts, the spectators who watch the films of Ünlü experience the same
spectating experience (Denzin, 1995: 76). In addition to the stories used in the narrative, the presence
of the characters presented in relation to the story in the film Son of the Sun can cause the spectator to
find himself/herself in simulacra. Baudrillard said, “It is not simulacra that hides the truth. Because the
truth tells us that there is no truth. Simulacra is the truth itself. ‘’ (Baudrillard, 2011: 12). Baudrillard’s
thoughts, which allowed people to think about the conceptual questions oscillated between reality and
the truth, provided the opportunity for the spectators to question the stories that Ünlü covers in his film
narratives and the issue about the representation of the characters regarding their existence based on
these thoughts. Hence, the spectators of Ünlü films will have a spectating experience in parallel with the
questioning avant-garde spectator formulation. In this context, while the postmodern narrative strategies
used by Ünlü play with the codes of the classical narrative cinema, they also remind the spectators that
they are watching a movie, as well as prompt the spectators to involuntarily think and question via the
stories and montage of the films. Ünlü uses concepts such as oscillation in time, death, fear of death, soul
and substance, the truth, reality, rights, justice, and law in his films, and allows the spectators to think
while laughing with these concepts and also the concepts of philosophy and metaphysics.
In terms of the Turkish cinema after 1990, Ünlü’s concepts, stories and narrative strategies used in his
films have deconstructed the classical narrative structure and show both the spectators and the Turkish
cinema that different narrative strategies can also be produced. Ünlü, who includes pastiche in the films
with his lines and characters that are reminiscent of old Turkish Yeşilçam movies, shows that different
cinematic languages can be used while showing that a different cinema language has been developed in
the Turkish Cinema that is different from Yeşilçam. While Harvey mentions that postmodern fictitious
characters are often confused about the world they live in, the inner worlds of the characters that Ünlü
used in two films remind the worlds of these postmodern fictitious characters (Harvey, 2006: 56). The
characters in Ünlü’s films are acting as postmodern fictitious characters who are confused about the world
they belong to both in terms of the stories of the movies and with the conflicts in their own inner world.
References are also made to the objects used by characters, the stories of the films, concepts, and genres.
While pastiche of extreme violence is observed in the film Son of the Sun, in the film The Extremely
Tragic Story of Celal Tan and His Family, the concepts of rights and justice are parodied and presented
through characters and events, and by doing so, differences are brought about in the spectating experi-
ence of the spectators. Through the shooting techniques used in art cinema, Ünlü makes the spectators
question about how a spectator watches a movie genre, and he also presents how sees other cinemas.
The spectator, who watches a soprano character that he/she can see in a foreign art film, suddenly sees
the character as a charismatic actor of Yeşilçam, he/she remembers what he has watched so far with the
pastiche technique used by the director, and thus, examples of pastiche are presented in various forms
in the film narrative. In this context, there are also people who think that the use of pastiche in cinema
may be dangerous. Hayward criticizes mainstream postmodern directors and mentions that they have a
despising attitude about culture. Thinking that the distinction between high and popular culture should
be removed, Hayward indicates that the result should be meaningful. However, Hayward states that

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pastiche cinema devotes itself to contradictory readings. In this context, Hayward, who cites John Orr’s
thoughts, also points out that pastiche cinema may be potentially dangerous and may have a schizoid
aspect (Hayward, 2012: 366). Tania Modleski comments on postmodernism by using the concept of
‘fake decency’ that Lionel Trilling used in his essay “The Fate of Pleasure” (1963). While Trilling states
that pleasure is associated with bourgeois habits and modes of behavior for the modernist and speaks of
the necessity of demolishing it, Modleski notes that postmodernism is deemed as valuable as it declares
war against ‘fake decency’ (Modleski, 1998: 200). With reference to the idea that while criticizing bour-
geois habits, behaviors and moral principles with the term ‘fake decency’, Modleski adopts the idea of
the attack of high art against pleasure, in the two films of Ünlü, an attitude towards ‘fake decency’ is
observed. Details such as poet Alper Canan’s addiction for luxury, Fikri’s ideal Cihangir house, soprano
Okan’s bourgeois wannabe manners in the film The Extremely Tragic Story of Celal Tan and His Family
and the satirical usage of some discourses also reveal that the films have oppositional discourses. In this
regard, the concepts of high culture/popular culture discussed in postmodern films are undermined by
Ünlü films and both cultures are criticized.
The examination of the films of the post-1990 Turkish Cinema, which is called New Period Turkish
Cinema, in terms of its relationship with Yeşilçam reveals the fact that the two films of Ünlü refer to the
classical narrative cinema in lower texts by using genres such as film noir, detective and science fiction
and by using pastiche with certain elements that belong to Yeşilçam, insert also philosophical concepts
into the narrative of the film and so allow the spectators to think while laughing and conceptually enable
dangerous open readings. In this context, dangerous readings, as Orr suggests, have a schizoid aspect.
Schizoid situations arise not only with film stories but also with the inner conflicts that the characters
in the narrative experience. Characters and stories within the narrative that is open to philosophical
thought present a different spectating experience to the spectators of the Turkish cinema. The specta-
tors of the Turkish cinema, who are unaccustomed to dark comedy, fantastic narratives and the films
with a different cinematic language that makes them laugh and think have started to make sense of the
language of the postmodern cinema. Jameson, who has established a relationship between linguistic
disorder and schizophrenic spirit, associated the lack of unification of the past, present, and future times
in the sentence with the inability to unify the past, present, and future times in our own biographical
and spiritual experiences, and this state can emerge during the spectating experience of the spectators
of Ünlü’s Son of the Sun movie. On the other hand, to what extent will these films, in which the past
and present are intertwined and lost their meanings, the materials of the old are re-used like patches
again not revealing a new production, and the existing is shaped and presented with different techniques
to the spectators, make the spectators think deeply? This is another issue that needs to be considered.
However, based on the ideas of the critics who agree with Derrida, Nathan Jun states that spectators are
free to attribute more than one meaning to a film and argues that one cannot claim that the meanings
that the spectators attribute are the true or real meaning (Jun, 2016: 15). The sentence “the silliness
of the work done is directly proportional to the number of spectators” is a criticism of the spectator’s
spectating experience and with its feature of self-reflexivity, it pushes the spectator to re-question the
cinema in his/her watching experience. While Foucault opposes critical theory and cultural studies, he
notes that the relationship between film and the spectator is neither completely passive nor completely
active. Commenting on Foucault, Jun indicates, “A spectator can attribute a meaning on a film but it is
the film that makes the audience a spectator” (Jun, 2016: 27) and underlines that in fact, the position
of the spectator is involuntarily set in an established order. With the narrative strategies he used in his

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films and the plotlines in his films that make the spectators think, Ünlü showed as a director that making
people think and questioning can also be done in the postmodern films, and he provided cinematographic
gains to the New Period Turkish Cinema.
Postmodern cinema uses the structure of contemporary narrative cinema while attracting the atten-
tion of the spectators who can understand the elements of high culture and presents questioning film
narratives to the spectators who have internalized the popular culture elements. In this context, the
intellectual spectators who are familiar with the elements of high culture and the mainstream cinema
spectators who are familiar with the elements of the popular culture can watch the same film narrative
under the same roof. This situation reveals the rethinking of the categorizations in which spectators are
categorized with different titles. That is why the most important feature of the postmodern cinema is
that it is not included in certain and clear definitions. The questioning cinematographic approaches in
the narrative language of this cinema also show how broad perspective presentation can be made in the
art of cinema. Both films present the examples of prefabrication, intertextuality, bricolage, pastiche,
parody, intertextuality, and self-reflexivity, they enable the involuntary questioning of the film from the
perspective of the spectators who are used to the elements of popular culture and reveal the thinking of
the filmmaking philosophy.

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ADDITIONAL READING

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KEY TERMS AND DEFINITIONS

Intertextuality: The explanation of the relationships between two or more texts with references.
Parody: Text written by ensuring that historical and sociological realities reach a sense of humor in
the reader or spectator.
Pastiche: While parody creates irony, pastiche does not create irony and presents the imitation of
previous genres.
Popular Culture: It is a culture that offers products to the consumption culture and helps consumers
to consume these products frequently.

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Postmodernism: It is a concept that reveals its ideas and theories in a way that works contrary to
modernist approaches and thoughts.
Reflexivity: Cinema gives reference to itself in films and thus presents the narrative to the spectators.
Simulacra: It means re-designing the modeling of the existing systems in reality.

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